The rat capable of “regret”: what a study on its food choices reveals
Published by Planète Pets · managing editor: Clément Lacaille · how our guides are written
Faced with a food choice that didn't pan out, a rat sometimes shows behavior strikingly close to regret. Find our daily feeding guidance in the rodent food section.
A neuroeconomics study on decision-making
Steiner and Redish published a study on the behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of regret in rats in the journal Nature Neuroscience in 2014 (see the study). In a multiple-choice course where each option imposed a waiting time before a food reward, rats that skipped an option and then found out it would have paid off looked back toward the abandoned choice and sped up their next decision — a behavioral and neural pattern comparable to what's seen in humans experiencing regret.
What this brings to food-choice games
This ability to mentally compare a chosen option with a rejected one shows that rats actively evaluate their surroundings rather than simply reacting at random. An animal capable of weighing decisions this way gets bored quickly with a single bowl filled once a day and no element of choice at all.
- Offer several food hideouts to explore one after another, rather than a single, easily accessible source.
- Vary the waiting time before certain treats become accessible, to build patience without ever making it feel like punishment.
- Rotate hiding spots regularly, so exploring stays a genuine choice rather than a memorized routine.
This capacity for choice ties into the foraging games already recommended for the species: our article on digging and foraging enrichment for rats covers how to set them up. It also echoes other research on rat cognition, covered in our guide on the rat's optimistic cognitive bias.
Frequently asked questions
Can a rat really “regret” a choice the way a human does?
The term is used by analogy: the study shows a comparable behavioral pattern, without proving the rat experiences an emotion identical to a human's.
Should access to food always be made more complicated?
No, the goal is to vary the situations without ever making access to a sufficient diet genuinely difficult or a source of real frustration.
At what age can this kind of choice game be introduced?
As soon as the rat is well settled and comfortable in its environment, often after a few weeks of adjustment. Find all our guides on the rodent hub.
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This guide is part of Planète Pets’s Rodents universe. Our advice is general in nature: for any health concern, your veterinarian remains the only reference.
